


103. bleeding out

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [261]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-10-07 01:25:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10349307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: She burned the wound shut; that’s how Helena found her, by the sound of Sarah screaming the woods down.





	

The rabbits don’t run right on the island. Helena has been watching the grass for hours, now, poking at the fire, and there’s no rustling. She hasn’t heard a single bird, either; she hasn’t seen any animal tracks at all. This forest is terrible, like someone’s lifeless idea of what a forest should be. She blames Rachel for it.

The only signs of life: the fire. Helena.

Sarah, shaking in her sleep.

She burned the wound shut; that’s how Helena found her, by the sound of Sarah screaming the woods down. (No birds flying up.) (Terrible forest, terrible empty ghost-forest.) It’s the same fire. Sarah had been holding metal to her leg, and she’d looked at Helena, and her eyes had gone wide and then rolled back into her head. Now they’re here together, and one of them is watching the fire.

The burned patch of skin on Sarah’s leg looks like it itches. Sarah’s first scar, maybe. It didn’t come from Helena. Helena doesn’t know why that feels like it matters.

(Yes she does.)

She’s been dribbling water into Sarah’s mouth, every now and again, from her canteen. She tucked Sarah in under skins. She is very, very nervous about the sun going down; it’s too cold to stay out here, but she can’t move Sarah to a shelter. So they’re waiting here. Together. Just the two of them and the fire in the woods.

Sarah’s face is crusted up with dried blood. Helena licks the pad of her thumb, rubs some of it off. Her thumb over Sarah’s eyelid. Easy enough to press down, she won’t. She wouldn’t. She’s just remembering that it would be easy enough to press down. Helena would pour the water on Sarah’s face, but she only has the one canteen and they still need to stagger home. Best not to waste it, even if the sight of Sarah’s face crusted red makes something in Helena’s heart ache bullet-sharp.

“Shh,” she croons, “shh, shh. Stay sleeping. Heal. No hurries. No rush. Get better.”

That’s a lie, but Sarah’s brow smooths out and she murmurs some nonsense under her breath before she goes back to her fever-dreams. She’s still shaking, but at this point it probably can’t be helped. Helena shifts her weight so that Sarah’s body is pressed against her stomach, Sarah shaking the babies shaking Helena. It would be nice if Sarah would – get better – so that they could get out of here. But you can’t make someone get better, just by wanting it. They have to come to it in their own time.

Something is wandering through the woods, and it isn’t a rabbit. Helena puts her hand over Sarah’s head, combs her fingers through sweat-doused hair, watches and waits.

The bird steps into the light of the fire. It’s a goose, only it’s too white and clean to be a goose. Too pretty to be a goose. Goose-ghost. Helena hates it, immediately, hates the way it’s tilted its head to watch them. She hisses at it. It takes a step back, flares its wings open, bobs its neck.

“I see you,” Helena tells it. “Go away. You can’t have her. I am taking her home to her family. They need her.”

The goose-ghost squawks at her, spreads its wings so wide they look like an angel’s. Helena realizes, suddenly, that this might just be in her head. Sometimes she can’t tell. Sarah would know, but Sarah is slurring everyone’s names together in her dreaming and Helena can’t ask her.

“The last ghost I saw,” she tells the bird, “I ate. All the way up.” She snaps her teeth at it. It clacks its beak back at her, and then stumbles a few clumsy steps away from the fire. Helena didn’t bring her bow here; Helena only has her knife. Stupid, to waste a knife on a ghost. They’re never worth it.

“Go,” she says. “Go away.” They watch each other, still in the silence of this terrible wood, and the bird breaks first. It flaps its wings once, twice, and then has run its way into flying. It flaps off between the trees somehow. A real bird wouldn’t be able to make it. That is probably not a real bird, but how would Helena know?

“You’re real,” she tells Sarah. “I am real. Soon we will be home, and everything is real there.”

Sarah’s eyes move restlessly under her closed lids. Helena prods the fire again. In its light, everything is red. Sarah is red; Helena is red; the silence is red, and bloody, and waiting. Helena looks right into it, and waits for it to blink first.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


End file.
